Albert Atserias

Associate Professor, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Visiting Scientist and Program Organizer
Dates of Visit: Mar. 13May 12, 2023
Albert Atserias is an Associate Professor at Universitat Politenica de Catalunya, Barcelona. He received an engineering degree in computer science in 1997 from the Universitat Politenica de Catalunya, an MSc in computer science from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 1999, a PhD in computer science from UPC in 2002, and a PhD in computer science from UCSC also in 2002. In 2008, Atserias was a visiting scholar in the EECS department of the University of California at Berkeley. 
Atserias' research interests are in computational complexity, combinatorics, and applications of logic to computer science. More specifically, he has contributed to propositional proof complexity, descriptive complexity, and finite model theory. Atserias' work is known for building bridges between the two traditional tracks of theoretical computer science (track A and track B). Among his best known achievements is the connection he established between the two-player games for inexpressibility results in finite model theory, and lower bound methods for propositional proof systems in proof complexity. In 2002 he received the Kleene Award for best student paper at the LICS conference for pioneering work in this area. More recent work of 2012 further connects the two-player games with lift-and-project methods in mathematical programming. Since June 2015 he has been the principal investigator on a grant funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Program Visits